How to Classify Intermittent Test Failures

[Peter Dufault]

Can the test be marked as a possible emulator failure?  For example (I haven't looked at the report) use "?" (Huh?) and not "!" (Failed!) or "." )(Passed), that is, the test failed as an emulated system and the RTEMS project suspects the emulation itself is causing this.

You shouldn't be allowed to use this on physical devices.

> On Feb 1, 2021, at 12:31 , Joel Sherrill <joel at rtems.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 11:14 AM Gedare Bloom <gedare at rtems.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 9:42 AM Joel Sherrill <joel at rtems.org> wrote:
> Hi
> 
> On the aarch64 qemu testing, we are seeing some tests which seem to pass most of the time but fail intermittently. It appears to be based somewhat on host load but there may be other factors.
> 
> There does not appear to be a good test results state for these. Marking them expected pass or fail means they will get flagged incorrectly sometimes.
> 
> 
> Are they expected to pass every time?
> 
> Normally yes. But there appears to be some external factors particularly load impacting qemu which lead to failures on target side code.
> 
> 
> Intermittent failures are suspicious, and there is limited value to running a test that has an "intermittent failure" state, since it will always be successful if you don't care if it passes or fails.
> 
> Yeah. No matter what you mark them, it sucks.
> 
> 
> I don't see not running them as a good option. Beyond adding a new state to reflect this oddity, any suggestions?
> 
> --joel
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Peter
-----------------
Peter Dufault
HD Associates, Inc.      Software and System Engineering

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